Deadline

By Aryan Singh Nagar

The creeping shadow of the lone cedar tree outside the window loomed over Kaelin’s preferred writing spot. It no longer scared her, she had something much more terrifying waiting for her tomorrow.

The table in front of her was littered with stationary and electronics she liked to keep on hand as she worked away on her old laptop. The plethora of ways to waste time on her new laptop hindered her writing process, this old zombie was very handy when she had to get something written, quick.

Now what did I do to offend the muses, she wondered as she sat there staring at a blank document. She was supposed to be writing the final chapter of her novel today, seems like her luck had run out after the last week of amazing progress.

She snapped back to attention as the lights went out. She would never grow used to the abrupt power cuts in this place. She walked to the nearby window and peered out, looking past the lone cedar tree and across the field of waist length mountain grass, lit by the dying light of the evening sun, growing across rocky and uneven terrain. There were no signs of human habitation as far as one could see from here, she had been really lucky to grab this house.

Located at a ten minute drive away from the nearest town, Cedarshade was the house any author would dream of, secluded in the mountainous passes of Gai-shairan. Despite the apparent seclusion it had running supplies of water and a working, if somewhat unstable, power supply.

Everyone had cautioned her against buying this place, her aunt begging her to get away from here as she claimed having felt an evil presence. Poor aunt Shairen had never managed to get over the deaths of her children; she still coddled Kae like she was ten.

Kae lightly slapped her cheeks to bring herself back to the present, she really had to get over her habit of going on tangential trains of thought; or atleast control it enough to turn it into an asset for her writing endeavors. Her phone was begging her to pick it up from her bed and scroll away at the daily feed, No, she had to concentrate.

Turning her attention away from her phone, she closed her eyes and started to take deep controlled breaths, meditation often helped her center her thoughts. She gently repeated the breathing exercises her therapist had recommended, wether or not it helped with her social anxiety was secondary, it very often allowed her to get into her rhythm and type away.

Opening her eyes she set her sights back on her laptop screen, the blank document staring back at her in an open challenge. If this is what you want, this is what you gonna get. She planted her butt in the comfy gaming chair she had been gifted by an old acquaintance from university as a gift for her when she had managed to get her first novel published, a fact that she still had trouble believing. How long before her readers found out that she was just a hack trying to mimic the success of the authors she had grown up reading.

If nothing else she was grateful to Ashel for the chair, spending long periods sitting and typing away would lead to serious back problems eventually, the chair delayed it to some effect. She set her hands to the keyboard and her mind to the conclusion she had been thinking of since the very beginning of the novel.

Words eluded her, images refused to take form in her mind, she concentrated harder only for the story to slip farther away from her grasp. She lost track of the time as she dedicated herself to her craft, but the muses refused to respond. The shadow of the cedar tree grew longer as the sky turned a soulless gray color.

Strange, the power had never been gone for this long and never when night was about to fall. She was not getting anything written, today was just not her day. She got up from the chair, its strange falcon emblem above the head rest shining a burnt orange in the residual light that lit her room. She needed some fresh air.

She picked up her phone and walked over to the window, taking her sunflower sapling off the ledge outside and placing it safely over the wooden rack in her room beside the window. The crows would ruin her effort if she wasn’t constantly wary of this. The straw rag-doll she had hung outside her window only succeeded partially at it’s task.

She looked over the room one final time as she put on her jogging shoes. The half finished piece of pottery beside the sunflower pot was the only thing of the previous owner she had kept. A master pottery maker, ShaiDah’renar had been known all across the world for his works. Even the piece he had been working on when he vanished held a sort of eerie beauty, a sense of completeness in it’s abrupt end.

She walked to the door and closed it behind her as she entered the hallway leading to the stairs. The house was a small structure, with only two rooms on the first floor, and one on the ground floor, which she used as a makeshift kitchen.

It was hard not to stumble as she made her way down, It’s getting dark too quickly for summer, a surge of panic began to rise in her mind. No, you are better than the paranoid townsfolk. If only she could make herself believe her own thoughts; no matter how ideally located, the house was still eerie.

She found her way to the ground floor, surprising herself with her dexterity, considering the terror that was slowly building in her. No, this is not a horror movie; its just a power-cut, nothing more. Oh how she wished she could believe her rational mind, her instincts were pushing her away from the house as fast as she could.

Kaelin was really good at pretending she was brave, she could sometimes even manage to fool herself. She had to be, or else she would have been consumed by insanity long ago. The fire that had killed her cousins was still a fresh wound to her psyche, refusing to go away. How aunt Shairen would feel if she were to ever know that the fire that had taken both her children was no accident.

The thing Kae had seen that day, she still doubted how much of that thing was real, but the terror it invoked in her was enough for her to sacrifice her cousins to the flames and feel no remorse. Maybe she was broken, maybe she could get help if she just admitted this horrible secret. No, I will take this to my grave.

She found the doorknob leading to the front exit and twisted it as fast as she could, before the door could fully open she leaped out into the porch, her eyes closed in fear that she should not have felt. The floorboards beneath her creaked with age. The porch...is made of marble, then what was that sound. She opened her eyes and found herself back in her workroom.

***

“Okay, calm down Kae, you are not hallucinating,” a familiar voice sounded inside her head. Am I going mad, she wondered as she looked around the room to locate the source.

The room was exactly the same as she had left it a few minutes ago, except the fact that it had grown dark enough that it was hard to make out things in the corners. It had to be a mistake, she must have accidentally made her way back to her room, It had to be that.

She turned around and twisted the doorknob once again. The door slowly creaked open and what she saw evaporated any doubts she might have had left. She was there, standing in front of herself, gripping the doorknob and desperately trying to hide the terror leaking into her expression.

It had to be a dream. She extended her hand forward and the she in front of her mimicked her movements exactly, her fingertips met those of her other self and a ripple ran through the plane separating the inside and out.

She could feel her own fingertips touching themselves, the sensation made her feel dizzy. It was not everyday you got to feel the sensation of touching your fingertip with the same fingertip compounded over and over till it overwhelmed you to the point of dizziness.

“Now that you have experimented for yourself, I hope you would be more willing to listen to what I have to say,” the voice repeated in her head, louder and more emphatic than last time. Where had she heard this voice before?

“Who are you,” she asked no one in particular. It was really jarring to talk to someone, some unseen thing you could not be sure was real or just a trick of your mind.

There was a period of silence, but just when she was about to move on and try to gauge her situation, the voice responded.

“I am bound to not let my identity be known, but I can tell you this much,” the voice said, “I am here to help you.”

“What is happening to me, is this real or just a nightmare,” Kae asked the voice, she had begun calling it The Shade, as her body shivered uncontrollably. Another period of silence.

“There is a limit to how much information I can give you without risking myself, but know that this is real,” The Shade replied. “You have stumbled upon a junction between worlds. You have to be very careful or you risk losing yourself to him,” the voice trembled as if afraid of the mere mention of this phantom being.

It was growing harder to breathe, the fear was slowly getting to her. “I would advise you move away from the edges of this room,” the voice said. It was only then that Kae noticed what was making it hard to breathe.

A thick black smoke was surrounding the room, leaking in from the opened door she held. She slammed it shut in hopes of stopping the influx but the smoke continued to billow in like a layer of oil slowly spreading across the clear water surface.

She stumbled back, instinctively moving towards the window. The cedar tree outside had grown to enormous proportions, the smoke leaking from its branches like the hair of a banshee fluttering in the wind.

“That way is a no go as well, unless you want to end up like him,” the Shade rumbled. It was only then did she notice what it was referring to.

A half decayed corpse of a man was embedded into the tree trunk, its face a mask of horror halfway between a scream and a whimper. The lower body had become a part of the tree, the trunk molding itself around it as it slowly fed on its flesh. The ribs jutted out from his chest forming a macabre cage holding his heart, clearly visible even in the feeble light of dusk. The heart was still beating.

Kae’lin nearly gagged as she scurried away from the gruesome sight. This can’t be happening, she panicked and sought the voice. The shade remained silent.

“Tell me what did I ever do to have this happen,” she screamed, “I know I am broken, I know I am a danger to the people around me. I even picked this damned house to avoid hurting anyone, then why, WHY do everywhere I go does death keep hounding me.”

“You assume everything in this world has to make sense,” the Shade replied in a voice that was somehow both wistful and condemning, “I of all can relate to what you are feeling.”

“The truth is, that both of us are insignificant in this game. There is no reason that we were chosen except that maybe we had a stroke of terrible luck. That is all there is to it,” the Shade replied with a resigned tone, “All we can do is either lay down and accept our tragic ends, or keep struggling with our meager abilities. I will respect your decision no matter which you choose.”

The miasma was slowly closing in on her, there was not much time. She had to make a choice. Trembling, weeping, terrified, Kae forced air into her lungs, “I will not end here. Tell me what I have to do”

“I cannot give you the answer, he can erase me in an instant if I did, all I can do is buy you time. You already have everything you need to solve this deadlock. Think hard, may the Ardor favor you,” the shade said as its voice slowly died out.

The advancing miasma halted as if it had run into an invisible wall, only a small region around her work table was still free of its influence. Her sunflower had not been lucky enough to survive. The sapling sat there on the wooden rack, wilted and looking at her as if asking for help. “I am sorry, I cannot save you.”

She had never been able to save anyone but herself.

***

Kaelin ran her gaze over the room shrouded in the darkness of dusk and the strange miasma that leaked in from the doors. Her wooden rack & bed had already been overrun by the curling smoky tendrils. She had seen something like this before, that fateful day she had burnt down her cousins. She expected the incomprehensible thing to show up any moment and take her to madness this time. She was not gonna sit and wait for it.

She ran over to her worktable and checked her laptop for network. No luck, she regretted not having a reserve battery installed in her wireless router. None of the exits were safe, her phone was beyond reach and none of her devices had network connection; absolutely perfect.

This was not going to work, she had to find another way and fast. She picked up one of the empty energy drink cans from her table and moved back to the window. Trying her best to not look at that abomination, she opened the window and threw the can straight at the cedar tree.

The tree trunk opened up like the maw of a starving beast and gulped the can solid. So much for experimentation. She continued suppressing her terror beneath her mask of rationality. Another way.

She was moving back to her worktable when her eyes caught the one thing in the room that had never made sense to her. The unfinished piece of pottery, It held her attention even when she had much important matters to think about.

ShaiDah’renar had gone missing last month, the law enforcement unable to find any sign of him. How could they; it was not everyday that you discovered a living body embedded in a tree. She had heard of the story, of how he had created the best works of his life in the week before he vanished; he had developed a large following after his death. Kae doubted that he would have chosen that over his life.

Last week she had been writing more than five thousand words everyday, even today she had managed to finish the penultimate chapter, pumping out two thousand words in an hour. It was the final chapter that eluded her still.

The pieces of the puzzle slowly clicked into place. She sat back to work on her ending, her only remaining path to survival. The miasma had started advancing slowly yet again, The Shade would not be able to help her for much longer.

Everything after that was a blur, she couldn’t get herself to write a single word for what felt like ages, her mind in conflict with itself over the quality of her writing. She knew that it was okay to write bad first drafts, but she had never been able to accept it. Today she had to, her life depended on it.

Ignoring the voice that berated her she kept on typing, not caring for any spelling or grammatical errors, not pausing to edit, she let her hands take on a mind of their own and trusted them to think faster than her mind. She knew what she wrote was subpar, but it did not matter.

It was late at night when she reached the last scene, the miasma having taken over most of the room except her worktable. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe, yet she still kept on typing in the dim glow of her laptop screen. Her eyes hurt but she did not care, her wrists cried out in pain but she ignored them. Her inner voice kept on berating her, making fun of her work; she had no time to pay heed to its words.

She was down to the last paragraph, the miasma now filling the room like a sea of smoke upto her shoulder level. Half her laptop screen was shrouded, she had already lost feeling in her legs awhile ago, but she kept on typing holding her hands in an awkward position to protect them from the numbing miasma.

She wanted to give up, to stop and accept her end; but something in her drove her on, like a smidgen of light in this sea of smoky tendrils. The falcon emblem on her chair glowed with a subtle orange light. She finally understood where she had heard the Shade before. She would have to thank Ashel for whatever he had done.

Typing away she reached the last sentence, but the miasma had now numbed her fingers. She had to type with her hands balled into fists, her fingers not responding to her wishes.

Just another sentence, just another... sen. She slumped onto her table, the last of her consciousness fading. All she remembered was a voice whispering to her, a voice she had known all along, “You did great Kae, leave the rest to me.” The world flashed a brilliant white and the sound of a million whips cracking assaulted her ears. She could not care anymore, she had earned her rest.

***

Sheriff Gleikar had been the busiest this past month in his tenure as an officer in Gai-shairan. A missing person case was one thing but now he had nature deciding to be wacky under his watch. A lightning bolt had struck Cedarshade, that damned ghosthouse.

The villagers had alerted him when they saw the smoke rising from the mountain pass. There was nothing left of the house by the time he had arrived. The structure was growing old and no way in damnation was it gonna survive a lightning strike this close.

What was the problem is that there was no corpse to be found, atleast not of the madwoman who had gone against his advice and brought this thing. If she was alive he wanted to ask her what did she think of his advice now.

What he did find was a male corpse etched into the trunk of that lone cedar tree the owner had named this house after. The tree had been blown almost to bits and there only remained a blackened stump. That and a half decayed body rising from it.

Gleikar had seen corpses in his time but whatever this was, it was not the work of men. The body was overgrown with branches and roots stemming from every open space. The flesh had been half consumed and the blackened ribs formed a macabre cage.

Funny thing, where the man should have had a heart there was one of those energy drink cans kids liked to chug these days, he preferred good ol’ coffee. More funny was the fact that this corpse survived intact when the tree and house had been blown away.

No signs of the wannabe author in the wreckage, he made his way to the oddest thing about this whole shebang was the empty circle in the left section of the house. It was as if the ground had been gouged out and everything that was above it had just vanished into thin air.

The only thing found in the circle was a dying sunflower, its petals gone gray as if the color had been drained from it. Damn thing had somehow survived a lightning strike. This was gonna be one hell of a report to submit to higher ups.

Maybe its time I try one of those energy drinks, chumps like ta drink deez days. He was going to have a long night ahead trying to sort this mess.

By Aryan Singh Nagar